by Lesley Diehl
“You, too.”
“Yes, me, too. I may find out Michael was my brother, or he may have been the son of some man, unidentified. We won’t know until we do the testing.”
“This Harrington guy wants to meet with Ronald and me. I don’t think I can do that now.”
“You don’t have to. I’m sure your lawyer told you that.”
“But I want to know about him, don’t you? Would you go to a meeting in my place?”
~
I never should have said yes to meeting Marshall Harrington. Worse yet, I had promised Sally I’d try to get an intern from the college to help her in the bakery, not likely when I knew the college had no use for me any longer. I’d work something out.
Meantime, I rushed home after speaking to Sally, hoping to be able to mow the lawn around the barn and house. I hadn’t given the grounds any attention since I’d sown some grass seed in late summer. In the warm autumn air and sunny days, it had grown in clumps, long and spindly in some areas with bald patches in others. As I wheeled my mower around the shrubs growing in the back of the barn I noted my oleander bush looked as if someone had tried to prune it, but without regard for the shape of the bush. One side of it was missing branches, as if they’d been torn off.
Maybe the deer got to it, I thought. The garden shop had told me it might not thrive here, but I loved the flowers and leaves, so, I’d purchased it anyway, thinking I could replace it if it didn’t make it through the winter. Now it looked as if it hadn’t survived the fall, despite the lack of a frost yet.
I turned off the mower and stooped down to examine the dirt around the shrub, scraping back the leaves collected on the ground. Maybe the thick layer of them was preventing it from getting moisture. I threw the debris at the foot of the plant into a pile and noted something poked into the ground at the base of the bush. I pulled it out. It was one of the skewers used for the chicken satay. Darn kids, I thought. They couldn’t throw their garbage out after they’d filched the chicken, but they buried it in the ground to hide what they were doing. I found several more skewers. It struck me as odd that the students would feel it necessary to hide them here when it was easy enough to pitch them into the garbage inside. Then it hit me. I knew why they were left out here.
I called Jake on my cell. “Did you find the skewer Bruce’s chicken was on?”
Jake’s reply sounded cautious. “Yes. Why do you want to know?”
“Maybe it’s nothing, but you might want to come over here. I found something suspicious.”
I sat on my lawn tractor near the oleander bush as if guarding it could make any difference to Bruce now. I almost fell off the seat when a voice from behind me interrupted my thoughts.
“Hi.”
Startled, I regained my balance and turned around. Behind me stood a young woman, probably in her early twenties. She wore a longish dress, plainly sewed, made out of a small-flowered print cotton. Although something about her felt familiar to me, I wasn’t crazy about having someone sneak up on me on my own property.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was taking a walk up there.” She pointed to the hill behind my barn where the field climbed sharply to the far ridge. “I saw you doing something to that plant, and I wondered why it was so interesting.”
“It’s an oleander, and it looks as if someone has torn off the branches on one side.”
She smiled at me, a smile that looked a bit empty. I wondered if she was one of those young people in a group home in town for developmentally delayed persons.
“You know the kind of bush?” I asked. Then I knew why I thought I knew her. She had been at Bruce’s memorial service, sitting in the back of the room and leaving before the service was finished as if she didn’t want anyone to see her.
“I know something about gardening. That bush is poisonous. It could kill someone if they ate the leaves or flowers or any other part of it.”
“You mean like Bruce?”
“Yes, Bruce. Why would he eat a plant that would kill him?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Bruce’s sister Megan. I’ve got to go back now. I told Father I wanted to visit the place where Bruce’s soul finally met purity.”
“You mean, where he died?”
She didn’t answer but fled up the hillside and disappeared into the woods at the rear of my property.
“What an odd girl,” I said to Jake when he arrived. I explained what I found around the bush and the young woman’s sudden appearance near it.
“Odd, crazy, or revisiting the site of her crime?”
“You are such a suspicious animal. She’s not going to kill her own brother.”
Jake gave me his most skeptical look. “I can’t believe you’d say that, given what happened in Michael’s family.” He carefully took the skewers out of my hand and placed them in an evidence bag. “Of course, your fingerprints are all over them now.”
“Oh, all right. I don’t have the skepticism of a cop, and I handle evidence I shouldn’t. I never said I was good at detecting. In fact, I think I told you I wanted to stay out of this one.”
“You really don’t have much choice. I thought the skewers holding Bruce’s chicken looked odd, more like twigs, so I sent them off to be tested. They were branches from an oleander bush. With his system already compromised by his allergies, it’s what caused Bruce’s death. Oleander. From your plant.”
~
The word that a student at the college died on my property of a poison from a plant I had raised there blew through town like a summer tornado. I stopped by Sally’s tea shop on Friday afternoon to see how she was managing with her new intern. As it turned out, Rafe, not I, persuaded the college to assign a student to work with Sally. When I entered, all eyes in the small room focused on me. Obviously, the two women at the table farthest from the door hadn’t noticed my appearance in the shop. They kept talking, and I caught the tail end of their conversation.
“She was the one who found that other microbrewer dead this past summer, and now her poisonous plantings killed that poor young man from the college. What kind of brews is she making at her place?”
Her companion laughed. “Ooh, maybe she’s like the witches from Shakespeare. You know, ‘bubble, bubble’ stuff. Some lethal concoction.”
Anger almost choked off my ability to speak, but my baser nature prevailed. I walked over to the table.
“Come out to the place for a visit. I’m brewing up a nasty potion right now.”
Sally had been sitting on a stool at the cash register. She got off her perch with some difficulty when I came in. For a brief moment she smiled, happy to see me, but my words wiped the look of welcome off her face. She tallied up the bills of her customers while I stood in the middle of the room and scowled at everyone. I couldn’t help myself. Soon the little shop was empty.
“You sure do clear a room out quickly,” she said.
My shoulders drooped when I realized I had ruined her Friday afternoon business.
“Oh, damn. I’m sorry, but bad stuff happens around me, and it’s not my fault, you know.”
“That’s hard for this community to believe when those things are murder. I guess it wasn’t enough for you that people don’t want to buy your brews because of your reputation. Now you have to come in here and ruin my business.”
I was shocked. “People don’t want to buy my products?”
“I don’t know. I was trying to kid you out of your vile mood.”
“I’m sorry for getting in everyone’s face like that, but I’m tired of being thought the one responsible for anyone’s death.”
“Of course you are. Come sit down. Have you met Amy yet? She’s from the college.”
I smiled at the young woman whose facial expression said she placed me in the same category as a serial killer.
“Hi,” I said. She looked familiar to me, and I was about to ask her if we’d met before, but she turned her bac
k and busied herself behind the counter.
“Could you get us some tea, Amy, and a couple of those scones too?” Sally asked. “Nothing like tea to make you feel better.”
“I think I’d rather have a stiff scotch.”
“You’ll have to go down the street to Tony’s for that.” As she said this, she closely scrutinized my reaction.
“Don’t give me that look. There is nothing other than friendship between us.”
“Right.”
“Jake understands.”
“Did he say so?”
I thought back to our midweek make-up sex session, the one where I said we should talk, and we didn’t.
“In a way.”
“I bet I can guess the way.”
“Let’s change the subject. Do you have a date for meeting Mr. Harrington?”
“Monday at ten. I told my lawyer I’d appoint someone to represent me.”
“He’d do it for you.”
“I know that, but I want someone with eyes and ears like my own. You promised me.”
“I know, but there could be a conflict of interest, for me, I mean.”
Sally thought about this for a minute.
“You mean if Michael turns out to be your half-brother because your father was also his.”
“Right.”
“I don’t see it, but you’ve got the legal degree.”
“You know I didn’t pass the bar.”
“Okay, but you have the legal mind, only slightly altered by the microbrewing part of your brain. I’ll call my lawyer and see what he says about this.”
“Good. You can get back to me.” I paused, letting my glance travel from her freckled face, now pale and filled with fatigue, down to her ever-growing stomach. How could so tiny a woman carry such a big baby? “I really came here to see how you were doing.”
She sat down in one of the tiny ice cream parlor chairs and groaned. “I worry I’ll break the furniture every time I sit. All I want to do is eat, not the stuff that I’m supposed to but all the sweet, gooey things we feature here. Amy’s seen me go through two scones already this afternoon. Right, Amy?”
The girl nodded and maintained her position behind the counter, fiddling with the tea cups and listening in on our conversation but saying nothing. Her dark eyes were large with concern and something akin to fear.
“We’ve met, yes?” I asked her.
She nodded and her eyes filled with tears as she stuttered out her next words. “I … I was the one who found him.”
Then I remembered seeing her among the students before I left for the drilling meeting.
“I’m sorry you had to experience that.”
Her face turned from sorrow to anger. “Are you? Bruce’s sister says you don’t care about anybody or anything except your evil brews.”
“Evil? They’re microbrews, and I take pride in crafting them. Why would she think they were evil?”
“They are full of drugs.” A flush was working its way up her neck and onto her face. “Alcohol and maybe other things, too. That oleander plant just proves that you make concoctions that may harm people. It killed Bruce.”
She tore her apron off. “I can’t work here. I didn’t know you were a friend of hers.” She pointed at me and said the last word as if her mouth were on fire. She ran for the door and dashed out.
Sally looked astonished at her intern’s behavior. “Whatever’s wrong with her?”
“I think Bruce’s sister Megan got to her. Megan’s very religious and doesn’t hold with drinking alcohol. I met her the other day, and she impressed me as a troubled young woman. No wonder his parents are worried about her, although they won’t talk about it. They got Bruce away from the same religious group, but she’s an adult and can make up her own mind about her friends. Jake wonders if the cult might have wanted to punish him for leaving.”
“Or for taking up with a woman peddling drugs.” Sally nodded at me and smiled to let me know she really didn’t believe this.
My mind was traveling down other paths. Could a sister murder her own brother for falling away from grace, I wondered, or was Amy somehow involved? Not my issue, I thought with relief. I knew Jake was trying to track down the cult members and their leader, the one Megan referred to as Father. Megan’s sudden appearance and then disappearance on my property was so wraithlike it made me shiver.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sally. “You’re as pasty as bleached flour.”
I laughed. “Megan visited me the other day to see the place where her brother’s soul, in her words, finally met purity. Odd phrasing, don’t you think?”
~
The college arranged a pairings event at Rafe’s place. I knew better than to attend. My presence would only put off his guests and any representatives from the culinary program and the college who would be there. Rafe was tied up with preparations for the evening, but when he heard about Sally losing her intern, he contacted the dean, who arranged for a young man to take Amy’s place. The replacement showed up only hours after she had run out. This student seemed to have no difficulty working for someone who knew me. Sally told me that when he left work at six, he rode his bike down the street to Moe’s Place, a tavern and grill hangout for college students old enough to drink. Odd, but that seemed reassuring also.
Since I was free for the evening, Tony invited Jake and me to his house for a cookout. Together we made pizza on the grill. Tony seemed at ease with Jake, who tried his best to return the attitude. Still, I couldn’t help noticing Tony’s dancing brown eyes and his enticing derriere. Maybe Amy and Bruce’s sister were right. I was an evil woman. We made the grilling our own pairing by trying my brews with the pizza to see which we liked better. Each of us chose a different one, but there was consensus on the stout. It was the best brew with the chocolate cannoli Tony made.
By the evening’s end we were all having a good time, encouraged, no doubt, by the good food and my great brews. The reticence Jake wore on his face earlier in the evening disappeared. We sipped espresso after dinner on Tony’s back deck, and each of us told stories about our lives. It was the kind of talk in which people who are beginning friendships engage, the getting-to-know-you talk. Jake was in the middle of his tale about raiding the women’s residence hall as an undergraduate but being too afraid to enter any room.
“So I hid out in the janitor’s closet. I figured I’d lie about what I did, and no one would know. Then …” His cell rang. He looked at the caller ID, and his face darkened. “I’ll be right back.”
He walked off for privacy while Tony and I waited, our high spirits deflated by the call. It had to concern something big for Jake to be notified off-duty. When he turned back to us, I knew the news was bad.
“You need to come with me, Tony. Someone broke into your restaurant and, well, they trashed the place.”
Six
Tony threw his napkin onto the table and bolted out of his chair. “Let’s go then. Tell me what you know.”
“There’s graffiti on the walls and broken glass everywhere. The officer who took the call and entered the place said it smells, forgive me, Hera, like a brewery.”
I grabbed my sweater off the chaise lounge. “I’m coming, too.”
“I’ll follow you two in my car,” said Tony.
Flashers on the police vehicles and strobes on the fire truck that was pulled up in front of the restaurant made Main Street look as if a carnival was in town. Although it was after midnight, the sidewalk was crowded with spectators, and more were arriving. Jake’s men kept them away from the building.
We entered and stopped short just inside the doorway. It looked as if someone had thrown the chairs into the middle of the space and then lit them on fire. Glass from broken liquor bottles littered the floor. The lights in the dining room were all on, showing red and black lettering on Tony’s stuccoed walls. “Go back to the city, wop” was scrawled across one wall, and on the other, “God will punish you.” On the mirror behind the bar, which was cracked in to
o many places to count, another warning or a promise, “Only death will purify your soul.”
Jake turned to Tony, who stood taking in the insults. “Someone here doesn’t like you much.”
“Someone with a religious bent, I’d say. Jake, have you interviewed anyone in that cult other than Bruce’s sister?” I asked.
“They’re elusive, like ghosts. Their friends hide them for fear parents like Bruce’s will kidnap the underage members away from the group. Are you suggesting a connection between Bruce’s murder and this?”
I nodded.
“Maybe,” Jake said. “Perhaps I should have a talk with the cult leader, the Reverend Charles, when I find him.”
One of Jake’s officers came up and whispered in his ear.
“Nice timing.” Jake walked out of the building. On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant stood a small group of people, not more than ten in all. They held hands with each other and moved toward Jake as if they were one person. The tall, thin man in the lead wore a long, poncho-like garment over his clothes, making him look like an Old Testament prophet. His full beard completed the image of a biblical character.
“Reverent Charles?” asked Jake.
“Some call me that, but to my children I am merely Father.” His eyes searched the crowd and came to rest on Tony. He pointed a bony finger at him and said, “That man is evil.”
Tony pushed his way in front of Jake. “Did your people do this to my place?”
Jake placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder and pulled him away from Father Charles.
“I’ll take care of this. Hera, see if there’s an unbroken bottle of brandy in there. I think Tony should chill out and have a snifter.”
“I don’t need a drink. Right now I’ve gotta call my insurance company, then maybe a lawyer to see what I can do about people like you.” His last words were directed at Father Charles who stood his ground, a look of serene beatitude on his face, well, on what I could see of it under all that hair.